


Dead-End Life

by na_na_na_batcat



Category: DCU, Shazam! (2019)
Genre: Billy reuniting with his mom from his mom's perspective, Character Study, Child Abandonment, Domestic Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 08:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19866451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/na_na_na_batcat/pseuds/na_na_na_batcat
Summary: Marilyn told herself she was doing the right thing when she left Billy with the police. When he showed up on her doorstep a decade later, she pushed him away and repeated the mantra: she was doing the right thing. She wasn't cut out to be a mother, and Billy deserved so much better than her.





	Dead-End Life

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, this isn't the next chapter of Lightning Before the Thunder. The next chapter was giving me a bit of trouble. I've only been working on that story since I started it, and I was starting to burn myself out. I needed to write something else, so I wrote this.
> 
> Since seeing Shazam in theaters, I'd been wanting to write something about the scene where Billy reunited with his mom, but I was waiting for the DVD to come out, so I'd have the scene for reference. I wrote and edited this all today, so it's not super polished. Hope it's still enjoyable!

Marilyn was rushing about the cluttered apartment when someone knocked. “Mars, get the door!” Travis demanded gruffly from the couch, eyes not leaving the television screen. Marilyn bit her tongue and forced down a sharp retort. She didn’t have time for a fight. Besides – she pulled nervously at the sleeves of her thin jacket which covered the bruises that painted her arms – it was a fight she’d loose.

“Just a second!” she called. She ran towards the door, cursing under her breath when she tripped over Travis’ work boots. She pulled open the door, sparing the person standing there a fleeting glance—a teenager with a nervous but bright smile. She didn’t have time for this.

“Hey, look, I’m already late for work.” She’d been late too many times. Her jackass boss had warned her. The winter and the snow meant it was hard for Travis to find construction work. She couldn’t loose her job. Not now. They couldn’t afford it. “We don’t need any magazines or whatever. Thanks though,” she said, making to close the door in the kid’s face.

“Oh, I’m not—!” the boy exclaimed. Marilyn paused with the door half shut and turned back to the boy with an annoyed sigh. “You probably don’t recognize me but. . .I found my way home,” he said earnestly, as he presented a keychain compass to her. _What?_ She had no idea what was going on, only that she _really_ didn’t have the time for whatever this was.

“Mom,” the boy said, soft and sweet. Marilyn’s breath froze in her chest. Eyes wide, she looked at the boy, scrutinizing his features. The dark hair, the heavy brows, and the light eyes were all C.C.’s. His nose, his chin, and the dimples—those were all her. “It’s me,” he stated, smiling with those dimples.

“Oh God,” her hands were shaking. “Is it. . . ?” her heart was fluttering, a bird caught in the cage of her ribs. The boy – her Bill? – nodded eagerly and stepped forward, arms raising to hug her. _Was this really happening?_ “Um, hang on,” she pushed him back gently, but by the way the boy’s face fell she might as well of slapped him.

“Who’s at the door?” Travis shouted.

“It’s, um,” Marilyn’s face twisted, her stomach turned as she thought about how Travis would respond to her long lost son showing up on their doorstep. “It’s no one, Travis,” she called, tone forcefully light. Billy looked at her, betrayal flashing across his face. He didn’t understand. This was for the best. He didn't want to be anyone to Travis.

Marilyn stepped out into the hallway, closing the door carefully behind her. “That wasn’t Dad was it?” Billy asked, forlorn. There were no dimply smiles now just big sad eyes.

“No,” Marilyn shook her head. God, she hadn’t thought of C.C., her high school sweetheart, in years. It had been with him that her life had first begun to spiral down the drain.

C.C. had been your quintessential bad boy, and when Marilyn was seventeen she thought she was in love with him. Maybe he thought he was in love with her too. He had stuck around after he got her knocked up, at least for a little while. Though really, Marilyn suspected that she and Billy had just been an excuse for him to finally cut it and run from the nowhere town they’d been stuck in all their lives. C.C. had been a whirlwind trapped in human flesh just waiting to let loose.

When she had found out she was pregnant, she hadn’t gone to C.C. first. She only went to him as a last ditch effort after getting kicked out. He’d wiped the tears from her cheeks and said _‘fuck your pa. We don’t need ‘im or anybody else, long as we have each other.’_ They had packed what little they had in his beat up pickup truck and drove, never looking back. High on youth, and love, and the belief that they could do anything.

God, they were such dumb fucking kids. Soon enough reality beat them down. They were a couple of high school drop outs with a baby and no experience living alone. They barely knew how to take care of themselves let alone a kid.

“I, listen, um. . .” Marilyn fumbled over her words, unsure of what she even wanted to say. She stared at the boy in front of her. The teenager. God, Billy was taller than her now, only by a little, but still. “It’s really you, huh?” she said, still a little disbelieving.

“I didn’t mean to run away. You know that right?” he asked, a touch desperate. It took her a moment to realize what he was even talking about. He thought she thought he ran away? “I let go, b-but it was by accident. I, I didn’t—”

“Yeah, no, I know, yeah,” she interrupted. She was going to be sick if she had to listen to another second of him trying to apologize for something that was her fault—something he should hate her for. Had he been looking for her all this time thinking they had just been accidentally separated? She looked him in the eyes. He deserved the truth she'd been too much of a coward to voice a decade ago. “I saw you,” she confessed.

“What?” he gasped, voice brittle.

“I saw you, after, so it was never your fault,” she said. Billy’s face crumbled. His eyes welled with tears. Marilyn had to explain, to defend herself, to give her own side of things. “Look, I was seventeen, okay?" she exclaimed, with more heat than she meant too. "And my daddy kicked me out, and your dad just. . .decided not to be a part of anything.”

C.C. had started acting strange, wilder than usual. He’d been drinking and smoking more than ever. He would disappear for days, and then come back to their apartment with suspicious wads of cash. Marilyn found used needles in the trash. When she was seventeen, young and doe-eyed, his bad boy routine was enticing. When she was twenty, jaded and with a toddler on her hip, it was a hazard and chore to deal with.

She confronted him about the hard drugs and the source of the money. She knew: he was either dealing or stealing, and she wasn’t letting him drag her down with him. If he wanted to crash and burn he could do it alone. They fought, more viciously then they ever had before. He’d probably been high. She hit him. He hit her back. She told him to get the hell out and never come back. He did.

She waited. She thought he’d come crawling back, begging her forgiveness. She would grant it. He would get clean, get a real job. Things would be good again, or at least what counted for good in their sorry lives. He didn’t come back. She saw on the news about his arrest. He’d tried to rob a bank while armed. He was going away for a long time. She wondered if it was her fault. Had he done it to try and impress her? She fucking hated him. She still loved him. She packed up Billy and their scant belongings and drove out of the city that night, never looking back. Low on broken dreams, and heartbreak, and the knowledge that the world didn't give a fuck.

“I was hurting, and I-I was screwed up,” her mouth twisted. She’d been young, alone, and with a small child in an unfamiliar city. That first year and a half in Philadelphia had taught her the true meaning of desperation, had shown her just how low she was willing to sink to survive, and the trial hadn’t made her strong—it had broken her. She didn’t think Billy knew what she resorted to, to make ends meet. She never wanted him to find out.

She shouldn’t have taken Billy to the carnival. They were on the edge of being evicted from their shit-hole apartment. The only food in their kitchen was a half empty box of cereal and old milk. But Billy had seen a flyer. He’d asked to go while looking up at her with wide hopeful eyes, and she just couldn’t say no. . .didn’t want to. She wanted the escape, to pretend for just a few hours that her life wasn’t tearing apart at the seams.

She remembered how he had wanted a stuffed tiger from a dart game. She had wanted to win it for him. She couldn’t, and he'd had to settle for some cheap trinket instead. It had been a harsh reminder. There were so many things she wanted to give her boy, but she just. . .couldn’t, didn’t have the means. With her as his mother, he would always have to settle for just barely scraping by, with not good but okay. Then she lost him in the crowd. It wasn’t his fault. It was all hers. He was just four years old. He was her baby boy, and she _lost him_. _She was a terrible mother._

“Look, it was just once I saw you with the police, I realized they could do a much better job taking care of you than I ever could,” she confessed, arms wrapped around herself protectively. She was a terrible mother. She tried to be a good mother, but she just. . .couldn’t, didn’t know how. She was all alone. No C.C., no family, no support system of any kind. She didn’t know how to raise a kid. She never did. She was stumbling along blindly, and she was fucking everything up. She was going to fuck him up. She left Billy, her baby boy, with the police and told herself she was doing the right thing. He might hate her for abandoning him, and she wouldn’t blame him—but without her, he was better off.

“But you’re good, right?” she asked, voice trembling. He shook his head and looked down at the ground. There were tears caught in his lashes. She knew he wasn’t, but she needed the lie. She had done the right thing. “I mean, you landed on your feet? Because, I mean, you look real good,” she pressed, a touch of desperation seeping into her tone. She had done the right thing. He looked up at her, and she forced a smile which vanished as quickly as it came.

Part of her, a selfish idealistic part, wanted Billy back in her life, but she knew—she couldn’t take care of him, she would just drag him down with her. “It’s just. . .” she glanced nervously at the closed apartment door. She looked back at her son. “Now’s not really a good time for me, Bill,” she whispered. She watched whatever hope that had remained in his expression flicker out. Something inside of her shriveled up and died. She was a terrible mother. She was doing the right thing.

“A-All I wanted to do is let you know that I’m doing good,” he began, with a touch of a smile which showed one of his dimples—her dimples. He sighed, “but I have to get back to my real family.”

_Real Family._ Those two words caused her chest to swell with relief, and her stomach to drop away with the gaping loss. She’d lost her boy, but someone better had found him. Marilyn nodded her head firmly. She wished she could of done better by him – visions of nice neighborhoods with picket fences, large bedrooms with tiger plushies, and happy smiling faces played at the corner of her mind – but she couldn’t. This, letting him go so someone else could give him all the love and care he deserved, was the best she could do.

“Here,” he said, holding out the compass keychain to her again.

“What’s this?” she asked, still not understanding the significance of it, as she gingerly took it from him.

“Marilyn!” Travis barked from within the apartment. “What’s goin’ on out there?”

Billy shook his head. “You might need it more than me,” he stated, before turning and walking off down the hall at a brisk pace.

Marilyn started to reach for him, but drew her hand back at the last moment. She pressed her hand to her heart, compass keychain gripped between her fingers, and watched him go. She abandoned her baby a second a time. She told herself she was doing the right thing. She was a terrible mother, and he was better off without her. He had a new family now, a better one. She told herself she was doing the right thing. . .but she hated herself for it all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Whelp, now that I got this out of my system, I'll get back to working on Lightning Before the Thunder.  
> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it, and would love it if you'd let me know in a comment! <3


End file.
